


Battle Without Honor or Humanity

by Wandering_Moose



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Can you spot all of the influence from Kill Bill?, Violence, Voodoo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 13:00:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5249138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wandering_Moose/pseuds/Wandering_Moose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's voodoo!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Battle Without Honor or Humanity

Certain mythological rituals involve the usage of potent and sometimes potentially damaging hallucinogenic drugs to achieve a goal. The Darkspear Tribe was one of the Tribes that still practiced this, although it wasn't an open book subject. If asked, you would do it and not speak any further of it, only go on with your gifts. The druids would do it to learn their first forms, they would drink a tea brewed from Stranglekelp and spend hours upon hours wandering in the desert, looking for their form. Warlocks would ingest Nightshade and consort with demons whilst asleep, warriors would rub Briarthorn paste on their skin and go berserk during their trials, etc. It was little things like that that could tie the Darkspear Tribe into their past.

Voodoo, human sacrifice, all of the dark bits were things that quite a few people wanted to move on from, but the old ways stick like glue to younger generations who are raised to believe in their traditions. The elder trolls not only endorsed, but encouraged trainers to give their trainees a little bit of 'hallucinogenic encouragement' and the trainers would usually listen, if only due to respect for elders or their ways. Or both. Because making your students trip balls is a great idea, nothing can go wrong with that.

Yumil was, by no means, young. He was a little bit of a late bloomer though. He had spent more time taking care of his family than choosing a way to fight. He spent a lot more time out running errands so he could afford to buy fish than beating up training dummies and fighting Nagas. After managing to pull strings with a traveling Goblin to arrange a permanent income source for his mother and sister, he finally figured he could afford to go out and find his place in Darkspear Tribe's amassed collection of fighting Trolls.

He never was a good shot, and he hadn't the time or patience for learning any magic. He didn't like swinging swords or axes either. He had been eyeing up the monk trainer, but he didn't know if he had what it took until he was (quite literally) thrown into the proving pit with a Naga. He had won by punching it to death, and that had amazed both himself and the amassed crowd that had come to watch. After the 'battle' (although he would have called it more of an execution for the poor Naga), the monk trainer approached him, which was a rarity.

He had started his training the next day, and he was both astounded and appalled at the brutal methods that the monk trainer used.

On the first morning of his training, he had walked up and kneeled down in front of his trainer. He had been told to only speak in Orcish, although he didn't know very much. He was much more fluent in Zandali. He supposed as long as he stayed polite, he might be in the clear on that.

“Master, I am ready to begin,” Yumil had no idea if he could do it or not, but he was damn well going to try.

“Your Orcish is pathetic. It causes my ears discomfort. You bray like an ass. You are not to speak unless spoken to. You understand Orcish? Yes?”

“I-I speak Zandali very well,”

“I didn't ask if you spoke Zandali. I asked if you understand Orcish,”

“A little,”

“You are here to lean the ways of a monk, not linguistics. If you cannot understand me, I will communicate you like I would a dog. When I yell, when I point, when I beat you with my stick,”

Yumil looked down at the sandy ground. The grains were digging into his knee, but he couldn't stand. That would be both impolite and show weakness.

“The Elders tell me you are not entirely unschooled,”

“I am proficient in hand to hand combat when the need arises, and I am more proficient in the exquisite art of Tiger Claw Style,”

Yumil had practiced that one in his spare time, if only because it was easy to mimic and he could watch the trainer's pupils do it often on the beach.

“Ha! Exquisite art of Tiger Claw Style? Don't make me laugh! Your 'exquisite art' is only fit for Human fat-heads!” The chuckle that came from the trainer's mouth sounded sincerely evil, although it could have been easily misinterpreted.

Yumil was glaring at the ground.

“Your anger amuses me. You think you are my match?” If a Troll could look truly threatening while sitting cross-legged on a block of wood, this trainer could damn well do it.

“No,”

“Are you aware that I kill at will?”

Yumil would have been shaking in his boots- if he was wearing boots.

“Yes,”

“Is your wish to die?”

“...no,”

“I hear hesitation in your voice,”  
  
“You are mistaken,”

The trainer laughed a hearty laugh at that.

“Then you must be stupid! So, so stupid! Rise, and let me look at your ridiculous face. Rise,”

Yumil stood, and faced his trainer. Looking him in the eye was probably a bad idea, but he did it anyway.

“So, my pathetic friend, is there anything you can do well?”

Yumil said nothing. He understood what his trainer was saying, but he couldn't reply. He didn't know enough of the language.

“What's the matter? Cat got your tongue? Oh, yes, you speak Zandali. I despise fucking Zandali!” The trainer yelled, and Yumil flinched.

And that was just his first day. The sessions did not get any easier as they went on, but one of the most memorable ones to Yumil was his 3rd day with the trainer, who had not taught him anything at that point. Admittedly, Yumil had gotten a little bit arrogant at that point, mostly because he felt his master didn't respect him, and invalidated what he knew.

“Demonstrate what you know. You land one hit on me, and I will call you master.”

Yumil had been crouched on the beach, poking at crabs with his staff when his trainer had said that. It had caught him off guard at the time, and he wasn't excited for it, nor was he dreading trying to fight his trainer. It was neutral ground. After all, his trainer was an older troll, and he had never seen him actually attempting to spar...it could have been money in the bag, metaphorically speaking. The old fart was good at creeping up on you though, Yumil would give him that.

Yumil stood, and spun to face his trainer, who had moved back 10 paces. The perfect space for a duel.

He charged, twirling and swinging his staff like a sword. He kicked, he swung his fists, but not one single blow seemed to land on his trainer. The trainer dodged with all the speed of a young child avoiding an adult with a switch, with all the grace of a running cat. Yumil was getting angrier and angrier, and his trainer was staying as cool as a cucumber.

He jabbed outwards with one end of his staff, not unlike how a knight would jab with a sword, and he almost dropped his staff when his trainer jumped and perched upon the thin piece of wood like he was a cat standing on a fence.

“And from here, you have an excellent view of my foot!”

The trainer spin kicked him in the face, and sent him flying backwards. Yumil landed sideways and skidded through the sand, and felt friction burn forming on one side of his face. His left tusk was throbbing, and it felt like it was cracked in a few spots.

“Your so called 'fighting style' is really quite pathetic,”

As Yumil slowly stood up, his trainer held up his staff.

“I asked you to demonstrate what you know- and you did. Not a goddamn thing!”

The trainer threw his staff away, which miraculously landed upright in a weapon rack nearby.

“Let's see your fisticuffs match my kung-fu!”

Yumil growled, and assumed a basic fighting stance before charging back towards his trainer.

He swung with all the ferocity of an angry drunk, his blows all being dodged by his trainer. He would feign aiming for a certain place, but his trainer would still manage to call his bluff and avoid him. It was positively infuriating for Yumil. He charged forward, and managed to grab his trainer's throat with a hand, but was thrown back by a surprisingly hard blow to the stomach. He lunged in again and managed to dead set one of his feet in his trainer's groin, but he realized he had made a mistake when he couldn't pull his foot loose.

His trainer twisted violently, and sent Yumil spiraling into the ground. Again. He sincerely hoped nobody had bet on this outcome. He sprung back up, and charged in once more, only to have his blow intercepted and his trainer grab his arm and twist it backwards.

“Disgusting. The new generation, they know not of what they speak.” He twisted Yumil's arm a little more, and then just let go. Yumil drooped down into the sand again, his sore arm hanging limply by his side. He was slightly afraid to move it. He could feel tears in his eyes, but he had a feeling that crying would not be a good thing here.

“Stop crying. It's not broken, you weakling. Get up.”  
  
Yumil could feel a single tear slip from one of his eyes, and he felt pain in both his body and his sense of pride. He managed to slowly stand up, his footing was incredibly loose on the sand.

“Tomorrow, tomorrow your training begins. You will hate it, and me. It will make you better and worse in many ways.”

Yumil didn't enjoy thinking back about the following weeks of training, but he did find himself thinking back about the hellish board breaking exercise that he had been forced to do, every day, until the bones in his hand were broken.

He was to place his hand in front of a thick, wooden board. His fingertips would be touching the board, and he was to punch the board from that distance, as hard as he could, for hours upon hours every day. The trainer would be lurking just behind him, to ensure that he never stopped hitting the board. After a week of constant blows to the board, the bones in his right hand had all broken.

He was forced to continue with the left hand after that. He had never imagined pain like this before, but now he figured that if he ever met his trainer after all this was over, he was going to kick his ass. Hopefully without being slammed into the sand. He wouldn't bet on it, though. The real kicker was the fact that his trainer made him eat his meals with chopsticks after all that. He supposed that deep down, it was the trainer's way of making sure his hands healed or something, but at the time on the surface he had assumed he was just being a dick.

Even with broken hands and cracked tusks, that wasn't really the worst thing to happen to Yumil during his training.

It was unknown precisely how or when trainers would give their students hallucinogens, but it happened to _everyone_ who chose to fight. On a cloudy evening, Yumil's trainer brought him some tea. The tea was a dark green, and he could see leaf chunks floating in it, but he had paid it no mind. He willingly drank the tea, if only to be polite, and because he was thirsty as fuck.

He had not expected to trip that hard on drugged tea.

He had no idea where he was, he was just sprinting and beating monsters that appeared from the shadows and in his field of vision. They were positively inhuman, some tall, some short, some with mismatched animal parts, and all with gaping maws of razor sharp teeth and black eyes. He would knock down every single one that ran in his path, until he either exhausted their numbers or he collapsed. It was what he had to do. Or, what he thought he had to do. He was tripping balls, after all. Logic makes no appearances when you're high.

He couldn't make out any distinguishing characteristics of where he was, everything was a dark grey blur. He would run, and knock down beasts, but he couldn't quite see where he was. He knew the ground was wet under his feet, and that was all he knew. He could breathe, and fight, and that was all he figured he needed to do. This was obviously a test of skill, it had to be!

Of course, his test was most unexpectedly ended when someone came up behind him and hit him the head with something. Or at least he assumed he was hit in the head with something. He went down hard. Unfortunately, the bigger they are, the harder they fall is a very true idiom. He was out cold, and his quest for...what was he even questing for? Booty? Money? Glory? He didn't know. His quest was over.

He had always had a problem with sleeping, he had such horrible nightmares most nights, a dreamless sleep was a blessing. Of course, praying to the loa about it was never effective. Praying wasn't effective, period. But, he digressed. Unfortunately enough, his “dreams” turned to his family as he was knocked out.

His mother, Andra, was a tall Troll with light blue skin, and a majestic mane of flaming orange hair. She had small tusks, but she was incredibly strong, and that more than balanced out any issues people might have with her tiny tusks. Her eyes were a radiant shade of gold, to match her heart, as he often had told her. She was an avid seamstress, a hobby that she had said she took up after giving birth to Yumil. Before that, she had been a feared fighter, but she hung up her axe after she met Yumil's father and got _busy._

His sister was named Bridget, a name his mother had heard from passing humans. Yumil always called her 'Bibi' though. She seemed to like it. Bibi had a startlingly large amount of pink hair, which she usually kept in braids. Yumil never knew how she found the time to take care of it all. Her eyes were a bright shade of orange, and her skin was an electric blue, a sharp contrast to her mother's sedate blue. She loved to adventure around, and despite her young age, found herself actively helping the effort against the local Naga. She was a good tactician, but she lacked the strength to back up her tactics. She usually would stand back and let the warriors do the fighting anyway.

Yumil remembered first associating her with a firecracker because of her hair and explosive temperament. He still loved her though, no matter how asinine or hotheaded she got. Sis was sis, he accepted that. And he wouldn't change her for the world anyway, he and his mother both loved her the way she was. Most of the time. When they didn't love the way she was their time was mostly spent avoiding thrown objects and yelling.

There was one member of his family he really knew little to nothing about though, and that bothered him.

He didn't know anything about his Dad, other than he was gone. His mother spoke often of him, but that never truly passed on any useful information to Yumil. He knew his Dad was an adventurer, and he had gone off to fight a very important battle, but he had never come back. He hadn't left anything behind, he had packed a rucksack and left. Just like that, when Yumil was still a little toddler. It was quite difficult, not to grow up knowing a parent. The other kids he would play with would sometimes mock him for not having a Dad. It was significantly difficult to deal with at the time.

According to his Mom, he was the spitting image of his Dad. Green skin, long tusks, gold eyes, bald (Baaaald. Baaaaald!) and a rugged physique. He didn't really know if that was true or not though.

He would always have vivid dreams, but a recurring one was about a Troll being killed by who he assumed was the Lich King. The Troll would run in, and put up a relatively good fight, but the fight would always end with the Troll thrown against a wall, his back broken, and his body slowly bleeding out. The Troll would try to crawl away, but the Lich King would waltz over, his stride proud, and stomp down on the Troll's back.

Then he would wake up, and when he went to bed again, the cycle would continue. It really was a Morton's Fork, he could sleep and wake up scared, or not sleep and go batshit insane from lack of rest. Either way it was absolute shit.

He could feel himself slowly waking up, his thoughts of family immediately quelled when he noticed that he was sitting on the cold floor, and there was a female Troll lying in his lap. He fidgeted once, then looked down to try and figure out who was lying on him. She was very pretty. Pink hair, blue skin, radiant and wide open orange eyes-

Oh no.

_Oh._

_No._

“Bibi! Sis?! Wake up sis!”

He looked around, his adrenaline rising, and he realized the very large blood pool he was sitting in. It was still wet, and had soaked into his pants.

“Sis! Please!”

He shook her body, and her head fell back to show that her throat had been torn out and there were large chunks of her torso that had been clearly bitten out. He shook his head, and one of his tusks caught his eye. It was covered in dried blood.

Oh no.

Please no.

He could taste blood.

He could feel tears stinging his eyes.

It didn't take long for him to put two and two together.

“Sis, sis please, wake up! Don't go! Momma and I need you!”

He shook her corpse, he tried his hardest to make her return to life, but it was all in vain. He had killed and eaten bits of his beloved sister. Yumil didn't know what to do. What was appropriate in this situation? Should he stay with the body? Should he take it with him when he left? Should he just leave? At any rate, just sitting with her corpse and crying wasn't going to do much.

He slowly stood up, and arranged his sister's corpse in a respectful manner. At least she looked dignified in death. As dignified as someone who was missing pieces of their flesh could, anyway.

“I'm sorry Sis,” He was crying, but at least nobody was around to see it this time.

He turned on his heel and left, and although he certainly didn't want to, it was probably for the best at that time. He took a deep breath as he exited the small grotto where his sister's body was, and immediately faceplanted in the sand. His footing might have been a little off from the drugs that were now slowly leaving his system.

He righted himself, and stood up to see his trainer standing in front of him, holding a staff.

“Your training is complete,” his trainer, for once, genuinely smiled. Or at least Yumil hoped it was genuine. He threw the staff to Yumil, who caught it with ease.

“That's all?” Yumil would have punched his trainer right then and there if he hadn't felt so dizzy.  
  
“And I am very sorry for your loss, I did not assume you would be effected like that,”

Yumil blinked, and his trainer was gone, all that was left was a puff of smoke. If he ever found that old bastard, he was going to beat his ass into the sand. He was alone, on a beach, with no exit plan for the situation. Well, wandering couldn't ever hurt his chances. But...he needed to see his Mom before he left.

He supposed he had to go see his mother, then he could begin the life of a wanderer. Who knows, he might even make some friends along the way. He could work on a Zeppelin in Orgrimmar for starters, and maybe stop when he reached somewhere he found interesting.

Hopefully, a grand adventure would come his way.

Only time would really tell, though.

**Author's Note:**

> This piece of work is Yumil's backstory. He's a troll monk, who was sadly lost because I needed more space on the private server that I play WoW on. Perhaps someday I'll write an AU where his sister lives.... maybe someday....
> 
> Also, can you spot all the influence in this work that was taken from the scene in Kill Bill 2 where Pai Mei trains The Bride?


End file.
